The Way Some People Die Read online

  Mario half-turned in his seat and saw him coming. “Dammit,” he muttered. “It’s the deputy sheriff.”

  The big man laid a hand on his shoulder. “I thought you might be in here. What’s this about your brother? Move over, eh?”

  Mario slid reluctantly into the corner. “Your guess is as good as mine. Joe doesn’t tell me his plans.”

  The deputy sat down heavily beside him. Mario leaned away as if contact with the law might be contagious.

  “You had some trouble with Joe, I hear.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “Take a look in a mirror, it might stir up your memory.”

  “I haven’t seen Joe since last Friday night.”

  “Friday night, eh? Was that before or after you got your face ploughed under?”

  Mario touched his cheekbone with an oil-grained finger. “Hell, that wasn’t Joe.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A friend of mine. It was a friendly fight.”

  “You got nice friends,” the deputy said with sarcasm. A downward smile drew his sun-wrinkles deeper. “What about Joe?”

  “I told you I didn’t see him since Friday night. We got in from a fishing trip and he beat it back to L.A. He lives in L.A. with his wife.”

  “If he doesn’t live in Davy Jones’s locker with a mermaid. I heard he dropped out of sight last Friday, hasn’t been back here since.”

  “He came back this morning,” I said. “His wife drove him down.”

  “Yeah, I mean until this morning. I got in touch with the wife, she’s on her way. She didn’t see the other one, though.”

  “What other one?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he snapped, and turned his flat red face on Mario: “Were you down here this morning? Aboard your boat?”

  “I was home in bed. The old lady knows I was home in bed.” Mario looked bewildered, and his words were whisky-slurred.

  “Yeah? I was talking to her on the telephone. She didn’t wake up until seven. Your boat went out around four.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Trick Curley, he’s a lobsterman, he just got in from the island. You know him?”

  “Seen him around.”

  “He was up early this morning, and he saw the skiff go out to the Aztec Queen. The skiff is still there, by the way, tied to the moorings. There were two men in it when it passed Trick’s boat.”

  “Joe?”

  “He couldn’t tell, it was dark. He hailed them but they didn’t answer him. He heard them go aboard, and then the boat went out past the end of the breakwater.” He turned on Mario suddenly, and rasped: “Why didn’t you answer him?”

  “Me? Answer who?”

  “Trick, when he hailed you in the skiff.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” The appalling face looked genuinely appalled. “I was home in bed. I didn’t get up till nine. Mama gave me breakfast in bed, you ask her.”

  “I already did. That wouldn’t stop you from sneaking out in the middle of the night and coming down here.”

  “Why would I do a crazy thing like that?” His upturned hands moved eloquently in the air.

  “There was bad blood between you and Joe,” the deputy said dramatically. “That’s common knowledge. Last week in this very bar you threatened to kill him, in front of witnesses. You told him it would be a public service. If you killed him, it would be the only public service you ever did, Tarantine.”

  “I was drunk when I said that,” Mario whined. “I don’t know what happened to him, sheriff, honest to God. He took my boat and wrecked it and now you’re blaming me. It isn’t fair.”

  “Aw, shut your yap.”

  “Okay, arrest me!” Mario cried. “I’m a sick man, so go ahead and arrest me.”

  “Take it easy, Tarantine.” The deputy rose ponderously, his wavering shadow climbing the opposite wall as high as the ceiling. “We haven’t even got a corpus delicti yet. When we do we’ll come and see you. Stick around.”

  “I’m not going any place.”

  He sat slack and miserable in the corner. The only life in his face came from the small jumping reflections of the candle in the black centers of his eyes. I waited until the deputy was out of sight, and steered him out to my car. Mario cursed steadily under his breath in a mixture of English, bracero Spanish, and Italian.

  CHAPTER 19: We drove down Sanedres Street on the way to Mario’s house. From a distance I could see a small crowd gathering in front of the arena, clotting in groups of two and four and six. A string of naked bulbs above the entrance threw a one-sided light on their faces. There were many kinds of faces: the fat rubber faces of old sports wearing cigar butts in their lower middle, boys’ Indian faces under ducktail haircuts, experienced and hopeful faces of old tarts, the faces of girls, bright-eyed and heavy-mouthed, gleaming with youth and interest in the kill. And the black slant face of Simmie, who was taking tickets at the door.

  Mario clutched my right forearm with both hands and cried out: “Stop!”

  I swerved and almost crashed into a parked car, then braked to a stop. “That wasn’t very smart.”

  He was halfway out of the car, and didn’t hear me. He crossed the road in a loose-kneed run. The faces turned toward him as he floundered into the crowd. He moved among them violently, like a killer dog in a flock of sheep. His hand came out of his pocket wearing metal. There was going to be trouble.

  I could have driven away: he wasn’t my baby. But a light jab to the head might easily kill him. I looked for a parking place, found none. Both sides of the road were lined with cars. I backed and turned up the alley beside the arena. The faces were regrouping. Most of the mouths were open. All of the eyes were turned toward the door where Mario and Simmie had disappeared.

  I started to get out of my car. The exit door in the wall in front of my headlights burst open with sudden force, as if a rectangular piece of the wall had been kicked out. Simmie, in a yellow shirt, came out of the door head down and crossed the alley in three strides. Mario came after him, running clumsily with his striking arm upraised. Simmie had one knee hooked over the top of the fence when Mario overtook him. The glaring whites of his eyes rolled backward in terror. The metal fist came down across his face. The black boy fell in slow motion to the gravel.

  I took hold of Mario from behind. His metal knuckles flailed my thigh and left it numb. I shifted my grip and held him more securely.

  “Calm down, boy.”

  “I’ll kill him,” he cried out hoarsely between laboring breaths. “Let me go!” His shoulders heaved and almost took me off my feet.

  “Take it easy, Mario. You’ll kill yourself.”

  Simmie got onto his knees. The blood was running free from a cut on his brow. He rose to his feet, swaying against the fence. The blood splashed his shirt.

  “Mr. Blaney will shoot you dead for this, Mr. Tarantine.” He spat dark on the gravel.

  Mario cried out loudly, making no words. His muscles jerked iron-hard and broke my grip. His striking arm swung up again. Simmie flung himself over the fence. I pinned Mario against it and wrenched his metal knuckles off. His knee tried for my groin, and I had to stamp the instep of his other foot. He sat down against the fence and held the foot in both hands.

  The Negro woman I had seen the day before came around the corner of the building on the other side of the fence. She was the first of a line of Negro men and women who stood at the end of their row of hutches and watched us silently. One of the men had the black-taped stock of a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Simmie moved to his side and turned:

  “Come on over here and try it.”

  “Yeah,” the man beside him said. “Come on over the fence, why don’t you?”

  The woman touched the bloody side of the boy’s face, moaning. I looked around and saw that the faces were dense in the alley around my car. One of the fat rubber faces opened and called out:

  “Attaboy, Tarantine. Go and get the black bastard. Let hi
m have it.” The face’s owner stayed where he was, in the second line of spectators.

  I pulled Mario to his feet and walked him toward the car.

  “Did the dirty nigger hit him?” a woman said.

  “He’s drunk. He knocked himself out. You might as well break it up.”

  I got in first, pulled Mario after me, and backed slowly through the crowd.

  “I got one of them,” Mario said to himself. “Christ! did you see him bleed? I’ll get the others.”

  “You’ll get yourself a case of sudden death.” But he paid no attention.

  One of the bright-eyed girls followed the car to the sidewalk and hooked one arm over the door on Mario’s side. “Wait!”

  I stopped the car. She had short fair hair that clasped her head like a cap made out of gold leaf. Her young red-sweatered breasts leaned at the open window, urgently. “Where’s Joey, Mario? I’m awful hard up.”

  “Beat it. Leave me alone.” He tried to push her away.

  “Please, Mario.” Her red-shining mouth curved in some kind of anguish. “Fix me, will you?”

  “I said beat it.” He struck at her with the back of his open hand. She held on to it with both of hers.

  “I heard you lost your boat. I can tell you something about it. Honest, Mario—”

  “Liar.” He jerked his hand free and turned the window up. “Let’s get out of here, I’m feeling lousy.”

  I took him home. When he stepped out of the car, he staggered and fell to his knees on the edge of the curb.

  I helped him to the door. “You better call the doctor and let him look at your head.”

  “To hell with the doctor.” He said it without energy. “I just need a little rest, that’s all.”

  His mother opened the door. “Mario, where you been, what you been doing?” Her voice was thin and piping with anxiety, as if a frightened small girl were sunk in the inflation of her flesh.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing to worry, Mama. I went out for some fresh air, that’s all.”

  CHAPTER 20: There was no sign of Simmie when I got back to the arena. The man in the box office who sold me my ticket tore it in half himself and told me to go on in. The crowd was gone, except for a few small boys waiting around the door for a chance to duck in free. They watched me with great dark eyes full of silent envy, as if Achilles was fighting Hector inside, or Jacob was wrestling with the angel.

  Inside, a match was under way. A thousand or more people were watching the weekly battle between right and wrong. Right was represented by a pigeon-chested young Mediterranean type, covered back and front with a heavy coat of black hair. Wrong was an elderly Slav with a round bald spot like a tonsure and a bushy red beard by way of compensation. His belly was large and pendulous, shaped like a tear about to fall. The belly and the beard made him a villain.

  I found my seat, three rows back from ringside, and watched the contest for a minute or two. Redbeard took a tuft of hair on the other’s chest between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and tugged at it delicately, like someone plucking lilies of the valley. Pigeon Chest howled with pain and terror, and cast a pleading look at the referee. The referee, a small round man in a sweatshirt, rebuked Redbeard severely for thus maltreating his colleague. Redbeard wiggled his beard disdainfully. The crowd roared with anger.

  Redbeard waddled across the ring to the corner where Pigeon Chest was gamely enduring his anguish, and smote the young hero lightly on the shoulder with his forearm. Pigeon Chest sank to his knees, pitifully shaken by the blow. Wrong beat its breast with both fists and looked around with arrogance at the crowd.

  “Kill him, Gino,” a grandmotherly lady said beside me. “Get up and kill the dirty Russian coward.” She looked as if she meant it, stark and staring. The rest of the crowd was making similar suggestions.

  Warmed by their encouragement, Gino struggled manfully to his feet. Redbeard swung again, with the speed and violence of a feather falling, but this time Gino ducked the blow and hit back. The crowd went mad with delight. “Murder him, Gino.” Wrong cowered and skulked away; all bullies were cowards. Wrong had a yellow streak down its back a yard wide, as the old lady said beside me. She could probably see the yellow streak through her bifocal glasses.

  Since Right was triumphing, I could afford to take my eyes off the ring for a little while. The girl I was looking for was easy to find. Her bright hair gleamed from a ringside seat on the other side of the platform. She was sitting very close to a middle-aged man in a gabardine suit a little too light for the season and a Panama hat with a red-blue-yellow band. He had a convention badge on his lapel. She was practically sitting in his lap. With a kind of calculated excitement, her fingers moved up and down his arm, and played with his vest-buttons and tie. His face was red and loose, as if he’d been drinking. Hers was on her work.

  Now Redbeard was on his hands and knees on the canvas beside the ropes. Gino was begging the referee to make him get up and fight. The referee grasped the evil Russian by the beard and raised him to his feet. Gino went into swift and murderous action. He threw himself into the air feet first and brushed the jutting red beard with the toe of one wrestling shoe. Redbeard, felled by the breeze or the idea of the kick, went down heavily on his back. Right landed neatly on the back of its neck and sprang to its feet in triumph like a tumbler. Wrong lay prostrate while the referee counted it out and declared Right the winner. The crowd cheered. Then Wrong opened its eyes and got up and disputed the decision, its red beard wagging energetically. “Oh, you dirty cheater,” the old lady cried. “Throw him out!”

  The gilt-haired girl and the man in the Panama hat got up and started to move toward the entrance. I waited until they were out of sight and followed them. The rest of the crowd, heartened by their moral victory, were laughing and chattering, buying peanuts and beer and coke from the white-capped boys in the aisles. Right and Wrong had left the ring together.

  When I went out the man and the girl were standing by the box-office, and the ticket man inside was phoning a taxi for them. She was clinging to the man like lichen to a rock. What I could see of her face looked sick and desperate. The fat gabardine arm was hugging her small waist.

  By the time the taxi came, I was waiting in my car with the motor idling, a hundred feet short of the entrance. The taxi paused to pick them up and headed for downtown. It was easy to follow in the light evening traffic, six straight blocks to a stop sign, left on Main Street past Mexican movies and rumdum-haunted bars, down to the ocean boulevard again. Another leftward jog along the shore. The taxi paused and let them out.

  Their destination was a small motel standing between a dog hospital and a dark and immobile merry-go-round. A sign over the entrance inscribed its name, THE COVE, in blue neon on the night. As I went by, the girl’s face, drawn and hollowed by the glare, was intent on the open wallet in the man’s hands. Her lean and sweatered body cast a jagged shadow beside the man’s squat open-handed one.

  I parked my car at the curb on the other side of the boulevard. Beyond a row of dwarf palms the sea was snoring and complaining like a drunk in a doorway. I spat in its direction and walked back to the motel. This was a long narrow building at right angles to the street, with a row of single rooms reached by a gallery on each side, and open carports below, most of them empty. A light went on toward the rear of the gallery on my side, and for an instant I saw the ill-assorted couple framed in the doorway. Then a T-shirted boy came out, closing the door solicitously behind him. He heel-and-toed along the gallery towards the open stairway at the front. I kept on walking.

  When I heard the door of the front office close, I turned and sauntered back. There was a pickup truck in the driveway beside the dog hospital. I went and sat on its running board in the shadow, and watched the lighted window. In no time at all the light in the room went out.

  I noticed then that the boy in the T-shirt shared my interest in it. He had mounted the steps without my seeing him, and was walking very lightly toward the close
d door. When he reached it, he flattened himself against the wall, tense and still like a figure in a frieze. I sat and watched him. He looked as if he were waiting for a signal to move. I heard it when it came: the girl’s voice calling softly behind the door. I couldn’t make out the words; perhaps the call was wordless.

  The boy unlocked the door and stepped inside and closed it. The curtained window lit up again. I decided to move in closer.

  There was another set of stairs at the rear of the building, where the gallery widened into an open sun-porch. I stepped across a scrubby eugenia hedge and climbed the stairs; moved softly along the gallery to the lighted window, staying close to the wall where the boards were less likely to creak. I could hear the voices before I reached the window: the boy’s voice speaking with quiet intensity: “How can she be your wife? You’re registered from Oregon, and she lives here. I thought I recognized her, and now I know it.” And the man’s, strained and subdued by anxiety: “We just got married today, didn’t we? Didn’t we?”

  The boy was scornful: “I bet she doesn’t even know your name.”

  “I don’t,” the girl admitted. “What are you going to do?”

  “You didn’t have to tell him that!” Hysteria threatened the man, but it was still controlled by the fear of being heard. “You didn’t have to bring me here in the first place. You said it was safe, that you had an understanding with the management.”

  “I guess I was wrong,” the girl said wearily.

  “I guess you were! Now look at the mess I’m in. How old are you anyway?”

  “Fifteen, nearly sixteen.”

  “God.” The word came out with a rush of air, as if he’d been rammed in the stomach by a piledriver. I leaned at the edge of the window trying to see him, but the window was covered completely with curtains of rough tan cloth.